Born to Die - Lisa Jackson [167]
“So you knew that he’d been involved with the fertility clinic?” Pescoli asked Noreen.
“That was so long ago,” she said. “But yes. I knew that Gerald . . .” She waved one bony hand. “That was different. Clinical. Nothing intimate. Not like having an affair and fathering children with whores!” The tears began again. She found a tissue and dabbed at mascara-stained tears drizzling down her cheeks. “I don’t understand. That really doesn’t explain why you’re here. Even if, even if he did ... well, sire these women for lack of a better word. How do you even know that?”
“It’s the one thing that connects the victims,” Pescoli said.
“Victims?” Noreen was torn between horror and disbelief. “Oh God! Why these women? Why now? And what does it have to do with him?”
Alvarez said, “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
Calm down, Kacey told herself. Eli has to be here. He has to. “Eli!” she yelled, more loudly. “Eli, honey, where are you?”
Frantic, her heart racing with fear, Kacey searched the house top to bottom once more. Her flashlight was losing power, its beam weak as she moved slowly, room by room, calling out Trace’s son’s name. Her pulse was pounding erratically in her ears, dread propelling her as she swept the pale light under beds, into closets even, dear God, down the laundry chute to the basement.
Still no sign of him.
“Come on, Eli. Where are you?”
The house was getting colder by the second. Through the upstairs she went another time and there, in the third bedroom, she saw a crack, heard the whistle of air seeping through a window that wasn’t quite latched. She tried to slam it shut, but it wouldn’t catch.
Throwing her weight into it, she heard ... what? The skin on her scalp crinkled as she caught her breath and listened.
Another noise. From the floor below! Footsteps?
“Eli!” She slammed her knee against and old cedar chest as she raced to the hallway, then flew frantically down the stairs. The flashlight’s faint beam bobbed and wobbled, casting shadows.
Around the corner and into the living area she ran, where the fire crackled and hissed and the corners were cloaked in darkness.
“Eli?” she said, her voice sounding loud, even echoing as the wind battered the house. “Honey?”
But she saw no one on the main floor.
Not Eli.
Not Trace.
Not the dogs.
But she felt a presence ... Something different, like the scent of fresh, night air clinging to the darkness.
Don’t do this. Don’t freak yourself out.
In a flash, the night she was attacked in the parking garage, sizzled through her mind. Brutal images of pain and fear.
Pull yourself together! Keep searching!
Where the hell is Trace’s son?
Bracing herself, nearly wincing as she passed gloomy corners, she pushed herself through the kitchen and into the stairwell. The steps to the cellar squeaked and her nostrils filled with the dry smell of dust that had collected from years of neglect. Whispery fingers tickled her cheek. “Oh!” She nearly stumbled down the remaining steps as the cobweb brushed against her face and clung to her hair.
Quieting her racing heart, she scraped the barest of light from her flashlight over stacked firewood, the scent of raw cedar faint in the cold space where more old furniture and tools had been left to gather dust.
The flashlight was fading but she forced its thin stream of light under the stairs, and across shelves where old canning glassware and boxes of insecticides hid.
Scccrrratttch!
She nearly dropped the flashlight as a mouse, its eye catching the fading light scurried quickly into a crack in the concrete wall.
“Oh . . God . . . damn! Eli!” she called again, but heard nothing other than the pounding of her heart and somewhere far off, the sound of chains rattling in the wind and that nerve-stretching thunk, thunk, thunk of a branch pummeling the house.
She hated dark spaces, had all of her life. No, that wasn’t true. Her real fear of the dark had come after the attack, when her assailant had sprung from the shadows.
Again, a horrid memory flashed through her mind and in that